Brainstorming

Jumpstart Creativity with the 30 Circles Challenge

January 18, 2013

30 Circles Challenge: Bubblegum and dragon

One of the creativity challenges we like to use at Center for 21st Century Skills is called the 30 Circles Test, developed by Bob McKim and more recently popularized in Tim Brown’s 2008 TEDTalk: Tales of creativity and play. This is a great challenge that can be adapted to suit people of any age in any setting. It’s quick way to get creative juices flowing, break the ice, or team build, and all you need is a sheet of paper with 30 circles, a pencil, and 3 minutes.

Materials:

Writing implement
30 circles template
3 minutes of free time

So how do you play?

30 Circles Challenge: Toad and music notes

Each participant grabs a pencil, pen, crayon, marker, etc., and the 30 circles template. When the timer starts, each artist has 3 minutes to “fill” as many of the 30 circles as they can. The goal is quantity, not quality. Patterns, doodles, shapes, animals, plants, words, and objects are all fair game, as are drawings that incorporate more than one circle.

Administering the challenge is fun, especially once you’ve done it with a few different groups, but it’s really important not to give your participants hints and suggestions as to what to draw. The key to the challenge is to encourage users to draw anything and everything they can conceive in the 3 minute period.

Variations

We’ve developed a few variations of the 30 Circles Challenge. Many of these variations were developed based on circumstance—maybe we had a particularly quiet group, maybe we were short on pencils. Adding and changing the rules makes for some interesting results, and it’s a great way to shake up the challenge for participants who have done it before.

30 Circles Challenge: Lots of round things!

Theme:The facilitator of the challenge identifies a theme at the start of the 3 minutes. The theme could be anything—a color, a certain ecosystem, a book title, a food group, etc. Each artist should try to incorporate that theme into their 30 circles.

Partners (with a twist!): Each set of 2-3 participants receives one sheet of paper and one writing implement. They still have 3 minutes to fill in as many circles as possible, but with one additional rule: The person with the pencil can’t draw their own idea. Instead, those in the group without the pencil must dictate what the artist should draw. If the person with the pencil comes up with an idea, they must pass off the pencil to someone else and instruct them as to what to draw.

Score keeping: Whoever manages to fill all 30 circles wins.

Reflection and debrief

Debriefing the 30 Circles Challenge is another great opportunity for facilitators to engage participants. For example, if one artist has a page covered in snowmen (a common theme in winter), ask if anyone else drew snow people. Try to discover commonalities. Participants can also work together to discuss who came up with the most unique design. Reflecting on the challenge as a group can yield some interesting results and realizations.

After facilitating a number of 30 Circles Challenges, you will probably get used to seeing lots of suns, flowers, eyeballs, and stereotypically round things. It’s not a bad thing! But you’ll never fail to be amazed at some of the unique ideas that seemingly come out of nowhere.

30 Circles Challenge: Comcast remote

Have you done the 30 Circles Challenge with your group? Have you developed your own twist? Post your 30 Circles submissions to our Facebook page. We’d love to see your results!

“Keep Away: A Four-Color Mapping Challenge” (and how you can modify it!)

March 16, 2012

Four Color Map of the World

Every week at our Tuesday-morning meeting, one member of the Center staff brings a creative, thought-provoking activity with which we kick off our meeting. One of our more recent meetings featured a fun twist on an old math problem—the Four-Color Mapping Problem. Here’s the backstory, from YoungZones.org:

Francis Guthrie, a 21-year-old mathematics student at University College in London, was mapping the counties of England in 1852 when he noticed that he only needed four colors for the map. He asked his younger brother, Frederick Guthrie, if this was true for any map. Frederick took the problem to his professor, Augustus de Morgan.

In 1878 Arthur Cayley presented this problem to the London Mathematical Society. He and various others tried to prove it over the next century. In 1976 Wolfgang Haker and Kenneth Appel of the University of Illinois proved the theorem using a computer. It took them four years to write the computer program for the Cray computer, which took 1200 hours to check 1476 configurations.

Some mathematicians are troubled by the proof by computer. They feel that a theorem so easy to understand should be able to be proved by hand. Anyone who can prove the theorem without the computer may win the Fields Medal, the math equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize.

From left: Karen and Sarah, Emily and Matthew work in pair

The rules of the game are as follows:

Each partner has 2 colors.
Each player must lay the tiles out so that no two of the same color touch. Our problem had one additional twist—because we had square tiles, we added the stipulation that the corners couldn’t touch either.
Taking turns, place one tile at a time on the table.
Continue placing tiles to create a rectangle. The width and length can never vary by more than one tile. (So you can have 3 rows and 4 columns, but not 3 rows and 5 columns.

The team that uses all of their tiles first, following the above rules wins.

Oh, and two more important rules – no touching your partner’s tiles, and no talking for the first minute!

Alex (left) and Frank place tiles on the table

The Keep Away! A Four-Color Mapping Challenge is a great activity for every classroom, setting, and subject. It’s easily adaptable, because you can use pretty much any material with different colors—cut-up paper, M&Ms, colored pencils/crayons, markers and a white board, etc. It can be used as an ice breaker, a brainstorming activity, a team building activity, or a problem-solving assignment.

Here is a virtual coloring map: www.subtangent.com/maths/ig-mapcolouring.php

More information on the Four-Color Mapping Problem:

Wikipedia: Four Color Theorem

Wolfram Alpha: Four Color Theorem

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Jumpstart Creativity with the 30 Circles Challenge

“Keep Away: A Four-Color Mapping Challenge” (and how you can modify it!)

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